The firing of Warren Woo, a well-connected dealmaker with a milelong resume, was the talk of L.A.’s investment community last month.
Chicago lender Monroe Capital said it fired Woo for cause, alleging he took client information and other trade secrets from the firm while setting up his own lending company. Monroe saw the new firm as a competitor and claimed Woo would use stolen contacts and information to take business from Monroe.
Woo and his attorneys declined to comment for this article but have denied Monroe’s charges in court filings.
The case is known in the investment community because Woo has worked for some noteworthy firms over three decades.
He got his start in the late 1980s in the Beverly Hills office of Drexel Burnham Lambert, then run by junk-bond king Michael Milken.
He went on to work under fellow Drexel alum Ken Moelis in the local offices of Donaldson Lufkin & Jenrette and UBS Investment Bank. He was among those who left UBS to join Moelis in co-founding investment bank Moelis & Co. in 2007.
Woo joined Monroe in 2011 as a managing director and partner, overseeing a $250 million investment fund and leading the firm’s L.A. office. Theodore Koenig, Monroe’s chief executive, said at the time that Woo had advised on more than $25 billion in transactions and was “an exceptional individual with a great reputation.”
Earlier this year, while still with Monroe, Woo started his own firm, Breakaway Capital in Century City, with co-founder Michael Connolly, formerly a partner at West L.A. private equity firm Leonard Green & Partners. Like Monroe, Breakaway is a private lending company.
Woo and Connolly started the firm in March and have raised $47 million from investors, according to registration documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Several investors and investment bankers in Los Angeles told the Business Journal that they had heard months ago that Woo and Connelly were raising money and starting a firm, but Monroe says it didn’t know about Breakaway until last month.
In a lawsuit filed just before Woo was fired, the firm says it learned about Breakaway in the course of responding to a subpoena from the SEC seeking information about Breakaway.
SEC officials declined to comment about the nature of their inquiry.
Monroe’s lawyers don’t say Woo did anything wrong by starting Breakaway. Part of his employment deal with Monroe allowed Woo to pursue his own business deals as long as he offered those deals to Monroe first. Rather, the firm took him to court and fired him for allegedly taking confidential information about Monroe and its clients.
Michael Dockterman, a partner in the Chicago office of Boston law firm Edwards Wildman Palmer who is representing Monroe, said Woo was trying to give his new firm and unfair edge.
But in his court filings, Woo denies taking any proprietary information from Monroe and says that he had been negotiating a separation with that firm for at least six months.
Dockterman declined to comment on that matter, but people who know Woo said they thought he had left the firm earlier this year or was at least on his way out.
Monroe wants Woo to return the contested information and for a judge to stop Breakaway from using it while the two sides are in court. Monroe’s suit was filed in a Chicago court last month, but has since been moved to federal court in Los Angeles.
